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"One of the UK's best online legal resources".
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".......a wealth of links intended to help ordinary people
establish their rights"
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help. Your site is one of the best I've ever seen"
One of our readers
(see our Press Reviews for more details)
LAW on the WEB is a free legal
information, guidance and gateway site for individuals and small businesses - devised, built and maintained by a
solicitor
formerly in private practice in the UK. We hope you find the site useful and easy to use. We
are constantly updating and adding information, so why not bookmark this
page and return if and when you need us, and don't forget to tell your friends
we're here.
Last modified: 24 July 2007
Stuff
and nonsense.............
A plea from the heart
(9 May 2004)
We probably get hit more by viruses and junk mail than most, as we
work on the Web and are prepared to show our email address on our
website, but the problems are becoming almost intolerable. On a bad
day we now receive about 500 emails that we dump straightaway.
There are 2 things that everyone can do. The first is to keep your
virus checking software up-to-date (just pay the subscription and it
does it automatically!!) AND don't open attachments that you
were not expecting. If it looks like it comes from someone you know eg
from us (they have picked up our email address from the Web we haven't
sent it!), then check with the sender before you open anything. That
way you cannot be infected. Please. Thanks!
Is your machine
beeping at you?
(2 March 2004)
If your machine has spent today beeping at you, then it is because you
have the latest designer virus on your pc. Its called Netsky.D. If
you've got it then please get it cleaned off your pc as soon as you
can. Check out www.sophos.com for
help.
If you haven't got it then please resist the temptation to open any
email that has an attachment, unless you know what it is or unless it
has been through an up-to-date virus checker. Even if the mail appears
to come from someone you recognise or would trust. The virus works by
stealing email addresses for both the sender and the receivers.
Only 29 days, but
what a month?
(2 March 2004)
February went out with a bang with more than 12,400 visitors to
the site in the last week of the month, and a record 45,000+ for the
month as a whole. We have revamped our Road
Law section, and are slowly following the same procedure through
the rest of the site, but we do have more than 200 pages to update, so
we may be quite some time. Our new telephone
advice service for motorists also got underway, and is proving to
be exceptionally popular.
Work is in hand writing up some new LotW Guides for things like
bringing your own personal injury claim; consumer law and representing
yourself in the Magistrates Court. We hope to have them available on
site very shortly.
So back to work..........
Another Virus Warning
(27/01/04)
As my Inbox goes mad with another bunch of emails with
attachments, its a sure sign that there is another virus circulating
out there.
This one is a worm, called Mydoom or Novarg, and sure enough it is
carried as an e-mail attachment, which if opened sends itself out to
new e-mail addresses. The virus may also open a "back door"
to the computer to give hackers access.
Thousands of e-mails triggered by the worm were bombarding networks
within hours of its discovery, warned Vincent Gullotto, vice-president
of California-based Network Associates' emergency response team.
Unlike many of its predecessors, Mydoom does not entice the recipient
to open the attachment by promising nude pictures or personal
messages. Instead, the e-mail carrying the virus often bears the
subject "Test" or "Status". The message inside may
read: "The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent
as a binary attachment".
The worm only affects computers which use Microsoft Windows. Users who
delete or ignore the e-mail attachment - which usually ends .exe, .scr,
.zip, .cmd or .pif - avoid damage.
1,000,000 Readers(20/01/04)
As we flicked through our web stats this morning we noticed that since
we changed our ISP in April 2001 we have clocked up 998,547 unique
visitors to the site, which means that by tonight we will have passed
the 1 million readers mark in just the last 33 months. Back then we
were lucky to get 4,000 visitors per week. We now get more than
10,000, and we will have had more than 500,000 individuals look at the
site in 2004. As we reach our 5th birthday we might just have to start
taking this seriously!!
Web Paralysis (30/09/03)
Over the last few days or even weeks you may have noticed that mail
has not been shooting out of your outbox quite like it should, or you
may have been receiving lots of error messages when trying to email
out. The problem has been a host of self-generating viruses, which if
they get into your pc then use it to spam every other pc they can get
hold of. It works on the same principle as one of those chain letters,
but it doesn't have to ask your permission. This causes unprecedented
amounts of email, which clogs up your ISPs system until it grinds to a
halt. The only answer is anti-virus software. Its not fun or
sexy, but it is essential and isn't expensive and it even updates
itself if you pay the £10/£11 per year to keep the live updates
going. PLEASE buy some if you haven't already, or bring yours
up-to-date - heh here's a link so you can DO
IT NOW. This works for us. OK I'll get back in my box now.
Check your mail (20/08/03)
If you weren't savaged by the MSBlast worm then you need to check your
inbox carefully for the latest virus, which is called SoBig. It will
turn up as an attachment (usually a .scr or .pif file) attached to an
email which is simply headed Re : Your Account, or Re : Your Details
or Re : Thank You (for example) and it will possibly come from a
genuine-looking email address (even ours is being used having been
picked up from the Web or elsewhere). If you have up-to-date virus
checking software then it will delete the attachment, but if not do
not open it.
Advice Now (15/07/03)
We have just been notified that we are an 
website. This service "brings together the
best information on the law and rights from a wide range of advice and
information services. The site doesn’t use a search engine but
provides hand-picked links from nearly 200 websites. This information
has been checked and summarised by Advicenow’s staff of experienced
advisors and provides accurate and up-to-date information on rights
and legal issues in England and Wales. Your
site is one of those we have selected as providing good quality
information". We thank them very much.
Apologies (25/06/03)
Sorry if you have experienced any problems getting into, and around, the
site over the last couple of days. Some page changes went awry (our
mistake), plus our ISP has had problems with their providers.
Hopefully we are now back to "normal". It would happen in
our busiest ever week!?! C'est la Web!
Handheld mobiles will
be banned! (24/06/03)
The Government have confirmed that it will be illegal from December
2003 simply to use a handheld mobile phone in a car. The offence will
carry 3 penalty points and a fine of up to £1000, although most will
be given 3 points and a fixed £30 penalty.
Another Virus
Warning!! (19/05/03)
Be on the look out for the e-mail worm
which pretends to come from support@microsoft.com.
The message comes with a variety of
subject lines but the attachment should not be opened because it will
infect users with a worm known as Palyh. Palyh
will then copy itself into to the Windows folder, and begins sending
itself to all e-mail addresses it finds on a computer.
Palyh has been particularly clever because, unlike some of its
predecessors, it makes little effort to lure people into opening it.
But Microsoft technical support does not send out files in this way so
don't be tempted.
The file comes with a .pif extension, a file name that may be less
familiar to users, but is just as vicious as .exe or .vbs files.
Simply Marvellous (12/11/02)
The weekly stats went crashing through the 8,500 visitor mark last
week, and October was a record with 32,903 visitors. We just hope we
can keep providing the stuff that so many of you seem to want to know.
Web User Seal of
Approval (30/09/02)
We were very gratified to receive the Web User magazine Seal of
Approval last week. Its always nice when someone else says that what
you are doing is worthwhile. We were however a bit concerned as we do
not have much water round us and our nearest fishmonger is 10 miles
away, but then someone told us it wasn't that sort of seal...
Broadband Partner (30/08/02)
We are delighted to be able to say that we are one of BT's Broadband
Partners (www.btbroadbandstart.com),
which means we feature on the landing page for the new BT Broadband
service. BT are about to start their biggest ever advertising campaign
to promote Broadband, and we are developing special content for this
new and exciting development on the Web - see our new Legal
Shorts
Worthless Speed
Camera Rules (30/07/02)
The Government have made much of their new speed camera rules - they
must be yellow, visible, warnings etc, but it is all just hype. Many
of the police forces involved have not complied. The Government say
they will make them.....sometime, but comply or not it is of no
interest to the ordinary driver. Failure to comply is no defence to
any court proceedings brought by the police. Get flashed speeding by a
grey camera, hidden behind a bridge with no warning signs and you will
still get done just the same.
Video Shorts (08/07/02)
The future of the Web is definitely broadband, although it might be
further in the future than most of us would like. Believe me I know,
the chances of me getting broadband access where I live are so remote
that I am resigned to slowness. But that does not mean that our
readers have to suffer, which is why we are currently working with our
partners to produce what we call Legal Shorts. They are 5 minute video
clips explaining some basic legal situations - such as the drink drive
law. If you like
them then we hope to produce more shortly. Check out our Legal
Shorts videos if you have a Broadband Connection. If not
then....
Bobby Approval (15/04/02)
We are very pleased to be able to say that all 140 odd pages on this
site now meet the Bobby
Priority 1 criteria, which means that the site should be more
accessible to our disabled readers. We have also set up a non-frames
version of the site for those whose browsers or software do not
support frames. Let us know if you cannot access any part of our site
- email us by clicking here
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